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Comment by guywithahat | Hacker News Reader

Yandex is also pretty good, they have their own index and it's a lot better than Google on political stuff (as long as the news isn't too recent) and any sort of torrent site.

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I don’t think anyone in their right mind is advocating severing ties with the USA to get closer to Russia.

That means I’m nuts, or what? The OP was right, Yandex is way better compared to Google when searching for politically sensitive stuff, and they don’t seem to have that much of recency bias as the Google search index has, which I found to be a good thing, but on the whole Google’s search is still slightly better, I would say. More convenient, at least, thanks to the deep integration within Chrome.

Bingo ! Anything considered too politically sensitive in the west (you know what I'm talking about) can easily be researched on Yandex.

Wanna find dirt about the west ? Use Yandex. Wanna find dirt about the kremlin ? Use Google/Bing/Whatever.

> you know what I'm talking about

Can you be more specific?

(I’m not the guy you replied to) but Google has like 8 ad-friendly approved sources you may get news from, which are all anti-Trump sources. It can be impossible to find news stories unfavorable to democrats without appending the name of conservative outlets on the end.

> Anything considered too politically sensitive in the west (you know what I'm talking about)

Actually I don't. Can you give an example of something censored by Google in the west the same way Russia openly censors it's anti-war voices domestically?

https://www.reuters.com/technology/yandex-warns-russian-user...

https://dfrlab.org/2022/03/31/yandex-suppresses-ukraine-war-...

Can you give an example of what “politically sensitive stuff” means here? Without context it contains multitudes…

Using Yandex is the sanest option for me, too, as it feels more like 2014 Google than any other search engine. i.e. I've found it will turn up old blogs, dodgy forums, torrents, which are buried or censored on American search engines.

I'm in the UK, and don't really care that Yandex is Russian. I don't like their politics, I don't like Google's politics either. Yandex just gives me the results I want rather than obscuring them.

https://images.app.goo.gl/TACTypB6AnUtAgku6

(Funnily, this comic was nigh impossible to find on Google, but turned up on the first search attempt on Yandex)

A lot of people whoa re boycotting some American goods are quite likely to buy Chinese instead so why not?

Also, in terms of privacy Russia and the Western countries will not cooperate - so Yandex or the Russian authorities will not be able to get much information on us, nor will anyone in the West get as much information from Yandex as they would from a Western search engine.

Part of the reason Europeans want to shun the USA is that it is sidling up with Russia.

True. Personally I have thought a change like this inevitable for a long time. The big threat to the US is China. Russia may even be potential ally against China in the long term and is no real threat to the US.

Russia is something of a threat to Europe (especially Eastern Europe), but China is a lot less of a threat to us than it is to the US.

In many ways European countries are sliding slowly into a closer relationship with China. In the UK (where the Russian threat is pretty distant) the government is allowing Chinese influence in universities, politics and business (universities that are transparently apologists for China), despite many warnings and spy/bought influence scandals. It seems to be even worse in other European countries.

I think the future holds an American lead alliance to counter China. It will contain multiple Asian countries, but I would not bet on which way European countries will go (and even whether they all pick the same side).

I certainly will, thanks for the plug.

Europeans will not start using a Muscovite search engine.

(Edit: R -> Muscovite)

Is there a difference anyways between Russian and Muscovite? After all, Muscovites imposed their culture forcefully all over Russia as much as they could.

Not all of Russia.

And I think it is a reminder to the people of Dagestan, Buratia, Altai, Bashkortorstan etc that they allow themselves to be taken advantage of and killed by a tribesman from the plains.

The reactionary spirit among the Western technical elites never ceases to amaze me, it shouldn't by this point, but it still does.

You may be right? It was written in anger.

It takes a lot to admit one's missteps! Appreciate the gesture, as an innocent byreader

It still seems very moderate compared to the fascist imperialist spirit amongst the elite (and majority of the overall population) of that other country..

This is precisely why I lost all respect for the West in the last couple of years and am now cheering on Putin's propaganda that is deepening divisions in your own societies. It's obvious you'd like nothing more than to carve up our country and destroy our culture — which the people of Siberia, Caucasus, and all other regions have significantly contributed to. But you know fuck all about that because your knowledge of Russia is based on news headlines.

Now I really hope he's successful, so this will come back at you.

You held respect previously and this is what caused you to lose it? Or you never held respect and use whatever to feed you?

Didn't Yandex RU divest and its now EU owned in Europe? could be a thin shell of course.

No. Original owner of Yandex (Arkady Volozh) sold Yandex to a group of Russian investors (approved by the government) and left with small number of assets in a form of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebius_Group Everything else that people usually associate with Yandex (search, mail, taxi, marketplace etc.) remains under Russian ownership.

Thanks for the correction.

Kagi is using it for image search and a lot of people do use Kagi

I do hope you realise that there’s subjective and then there’s “‘a lot’ of people use Kagi” subjective :)

That I do. I should have writen that after my morning coffee.

Based on what's being commented here - some absolutely will. And sitting on the eastern border of EU, that truly scares me.

yandex is very very good. i wonder why is not used more.

There are certainly some areas where it's not as strong, and I find the anti-bot filter is exceptionally aggressive. That said it does feel like one of the best alternatives. Google has gotten so aggressive about pushing ads or ad-friendly sources it can be impossible to find the content I'm looking for

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